Stephen, King of England
Stephen (c. 1092/6 - October 25, 1154), often referred to as Stephen of Blois (in French, he was known as Étienne de Blois, then Étienne d'Angleterre), was a grandson of William the Conqueror. He was King of England from 1135 to his death, and also the Count of Boulogne in right of his wife. Stephen's reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda. He was succeeded by Matilda's son, Henry II, the first of the Angevin kings. Stephen was born in the County of Blois in middle France; his father, Count Stephen-Henry, died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother, Adela. Placed into the court of his uncle, Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands. He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Adelin, in the sinking of the White Ship in 1120; William's death left the succession of the English throne open to challenge. When Henry I died in 1135, Stephen quickly crossed the English Channel and with the help of his brother Henry of Blois, a powerful ecclesiastic, took the throne, arguing that the preservation of order across the kingdom took priority over his earlier oaths to support the claim of Henry I's daughter, the Empress Matilda. The early years of Stephen's reign were largely successful, despite a series of attacks on his possessions in England and Normandy by David I of Scotland, Welsh rebels, and the Empress Matilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. In 1138 the Empress's half-brother Robert of Gloucester rebelled against Stephen, threatening civil war. Together with his close advisor, Waleran de Beaumont, Stephen took firm steps to defend his rule, including arresting a powerful family of bishops. When the Empress and Robert invaded in 1139, however, Stephen was unable to crush the revolt rapidly, and it took hold in the south-west of England. Captured at the battle of Lincoln in 1141, Stephen was abandoned by many of his followers and lost control of Normandy. Stephen was freed only after his wife and William of Ypres, one of his military commanders, captured Robert at the Rout of Winchester, but the war dragged on for many years with neither side able to win an advantage. Stephen became increasingly concerned with ensuring that his son Eustace would inherit his throne. The King tried to convince the Church to agree to crown Eustace to reinforce his claim; Pope Eugene III refused, and Stephen found himself in a sequence of increasingly bitter arguments with his senior clergy. In 1153, the Empress's son, Henry FitzEmpress, invaded England and built an alliance of powerful regional barons to support his claim for the throne. The two armies met at Wallingford, but neither side's barons were keen to fight another pitched battle. Stephen began to examine a negotiated peace, a process hastened by the sudden death of Eustace. Later in the year Stephen and Henry agreed to the Treaty of Winchester, in which Stephen recognized Henry as his heir in exchange for peace, passing over William, Stephen's second son. Stephen died the following year. Modern historians have extensively debated the extent to which Stephen's personality, external events, or the weaknesses in the Norman state contributed to this prolonged period of civil war. Early life (1096–1135) Childhood Stephen was born in Blois in France, in either 1092 or 1096. His father was Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois and Chartres, an important French nobleman, and an active crusader, who played only a brief part in Stephen's early life. During the First Crusade Stephen-Henry had acquired a reputation for cowardice, and he returned to the Levant again in 1101 to rebuild his reputation; there he was killed at the battle of Ramlah. Stephen's mother, Adela, was the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, famous amongst her contemporaries for her piety, wealth and political talent. She had a strong matriarchal influence on Stephen during his early years. France in the 12th century was a loose collection of counties and smaller polities, under the minimal control of the king of France. The king's power was linked to his control of the rich province of Île-de-France, just to the east of Stephen's home county of Blois. In the west lay the three counties of Maine, Anjou and Touraine, and to the north of Blois was the Duchy of Normandy, from which William the Conqueror had conquered England in 1066. William's children were still fighting over the collective Anglo-Norman inheritance. The rulers across this region spoke a similar language, albeit with regional dialects, followed the same religion, and were closely interrelated; they were also highly competitive and frequently in conflict with one another for valuable territory and the castles that controlled them. Stephen had at least four brothers and one sister, along with two probable half-sisters. Stephen's eldest brother was William, who under normal circumstances would have ruled the county. William was probably intellectually disabled, and Adela instead had the title passed over him to her second son, Theobald, who went on later to acquire the county of Champagne as well as Blois and Chartres. Stephen's remaining older brother, Odo, died young, probably in his early teens. His younger brother, Henry of Blois, was probably born four years after him. The brothers formed a close-knit family group, and Adela encouraged Stephen to take up the role of a feudal knight, whilst steering Henry towards a career in the church, possibly so that their personal career interests would not overlap. Unusually, Stephen was raised in his mother's household rather than being sent to a close relative; he was taught Latin and riding, and was educated in recent history and Biblical stories by his tutor, William the Norman. Relationship with Henry I Stephen's early life was heavily influenced by his relationship with his uncle Henry I. Henry seized power in England following the death of his elder brother William Rufus. In 1106 he invaded and captured the Duchy of Normandy, controlled by his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, defeating Robert's army at the battle of Tinchebray. Henry then found himself in conflict with Louis VI of France, who took the opportunity to declare Robert's son William Clito the Duke of Normandy. Henry responded by forming a network of alliances with the western counties of France against Louis, resulting in a regional conflict that would last throughout Stephen's early life. Adela and Theobald allied themselves with Henry, and Stephen's mother decided to place him in Henry's court. Henry fought his next military campaign in Normandy, from 1111 onwards, where rebels led by Robert of Bellême were opposing his rule. Stephen was probably with Henry during the military campaign of 1112, when he was knighted by the King, and was definitely present at court during the King's visit to the Abbey of Saint-Evroul in 1113. Stephen probably first visited England in either 1113 or 1115, almost certainly as part of Henry's court. Henry became a powerful patron of Stephen's; Henry probably chose to support him because Stephen was part of his extended family and a regional ally, yet not sufficiently wealthy or powerful in his own right to represent a threat to either the King or his heir, William Adelin. As a third surviving son, even of an influential regional family, Stephen still needed the support of a powerful patron such as the King to progress in life. With Henry's support, Stephen rapidly began to accumulate lands and possessions. Following the battle of Tinchebray in 1106, Henry confiscated the County of Mortain from William of Mortain, and the Honor of Eye, a large lordship previously owned by Robert Malet. In 1113, Stephen was granted both the title and the honor, although without the lands previously held by William in England. The gift of the Honor of Lancaster also followed after it was confiscated by Henry from Roger the Poitevin. Stephen was also given lands in Alençon in southern Normandy by Henry, but the local Normans rebelled, seeking assistance from Fulk, the Count of Anjou. Stephen and his older brother Theobald were comprehensively beaten in the subsequent campaign, which culminated in the battle of Alençon, and the territories were not recovered. Finally, the King arranged for Stephen to marry Matilda in 1125, the daughter and only heiress of the Count of Boulogne, who owned both the important continental port of Boulogne and vast estates in the north-west and south-east of England. In 1127, William Clito, a potential claimant to the English throne, seemed likely to become the Count of Flanders; Stephen was sent by the King on a mission to prevent this, and in the aftermath of his successful election, William Clito attacked Stephen's lands in neighbouring Boulogne in retaliation. Eventually a truce was declared, and William Clito died the following year. The White Ship and succession In 1120, the English political landscape changed dramatically. Three hundred passengers embarked on the White Ship to travel from Barfleur in Normandy to England, including the heir to the throne, William Adelin, and many other senior nobles. Stephen had intended to sail on the same ship but changed his mind at the last moment and got off to await another vessel, either out of concern for overcrowding on board the ship, or because he was suffering from diarrhoea. The ship foundered en route, and all but two of the passengers died, including William Adelin. With Adelin dead, the inheritance to the English throne was thrown into doubt. Rules of succession in western Europe at the time were uncertain; in some parts of France, male primogeniture, in which the eldest son would inherit a title, was becoming more popular. It was also traditional for the King of France to crown his successor whilst he himself was still alive, making the intended line of succession relatively clear, but this was not the case in England. In other parts of Europe, including Normandy and England, the tradition was for lands to be divided up, with the eldest son taking patrimonial lands—usually considered to be the most valuable-and younger sons being given smaller, or more recently acquired, partitions or estates. The problem was further complicated by the sequence of unstable Anglo-Norman successions over the previous sixty years-William the Conqueror had gained England by force, William Rufus and Robert Curthose had fought a war between them to establish their inheritance, and Henry had only acquired control of Normandy by force. There had been no peaceful, uncontested successions. With William Adelin dead, Henry had only one other legitimate child, Matilda, but as a woman she was at a substantial political disadvantage. Despite Henry taking a second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, it became increasingly unlikely that he would have another legitimate son, and he instead looked to Matilda as his intended heir. Matilda claimed the title of Holy Roman Empress through her marriage to Emperor Henry V, but her husband died in 1125, and she was remarried in 1128 to Geoffrey, the Count of Anjou, whose lands bordered the Duchy of Normandy. Geoffrey was unpopular with the Anglo-Norman elite: as an Angevin ruler, he was a traditional enemy of the Normans. At the same time, tensions continued to grow as a result of Henry's domestic policies, in particular the high level of revenue he was raising to pay for his various wars. Conflict was curtailed, however, by the power of the King's personality and reputation. Henry attempted to build up a base of political support for Matilda in both England and Normandy, demanding that his court take oaths first in 1127, and then again in 1128 and 1131, to recognize Matilda as his immediate successor and recognize her descendants as the rightful rulers after her. Stephen was amongst those who took this oath in 1127. Nonetheless, relations between Henry, Matilda, and Geoffrey became increasingly strained towards the end of the King's life. Matilda and Geoffrey suspected that they lacked genuine support in England, and proposed to Henry in 1135 that the King should hand over the royal castles in Normandy to Matilda whilst he was still alive and insist on the Norman nobility swearing immediate allegiance to her, thereby giving the couple a much more powerful position after Henry's death. Henry angrily declined to do so, probably out of a concern that Geoffrey would try to seize power in Normandy somewhat earlier than intended. A fresh rebellion broke out in southern Normandy, and Geoffrey and Matilda intervened militarily on behalf of the rebels. In the middle of this confrontation, Henry unexpectedly fell ill and died near Lyons-la-Forêt. Category:English Category:House of Blois Category:Kings Category:Royalty Category:Monarchs